ABSTRACT
Postcolonial theory has had a significant effect on the way we understand
intercultural relations today and historically. Since the 1980s, the lexicon of
postcolonial theory, the concepts it uses to represent cultures and cultural
interaction, have penetrated the rhetoric of contemporary politics, international
trade and all areas of academia. Needless to say, postcolonial discourse has also
had an effect on architecture. In the past 30 years, the work of thinkers such as
Frantz Fanon, Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak has permeated into numerous
publications which analyse architectural production around the world, both in
previously colonised countries and in western metropolitan centres. It is,
however, the work of Homi K. Bhabha which has dominated discussions about
postcolonial architecture. The fact that Bhabha employs the concept of ‘space’,
and numerous other architectural analogies, has made his work highly appealing
to architects and architectural theorists. However, the political dimension of his
work prohibits the facile application of his terminology in the study of specific
buildings and cities, or in the broader historicisation and theorisation of
architecture. The concepts that Bhabha uses in his writings demonstrate that
cultures are complex assemblages made up of multiple elements, histories and
subject positions (individuals, social groups, class affiliations, genders and sexual
orientations). Hence, when used in architecture they establish a strong link with
a wide range of issues outside the limits of such a disciplinary field. For that
reason, this book argues that the postcolonial methods of critique used by
Bhabha could help to develop further our understanding of architecture and its
professional practice.
